Homosexuality and the church

Obviously, this is a challenging and controversial topic in the life of the church. I came across this blog posting, Sharing the Gospel in the Gay Village by Pastor John Bell at www.challies.com and found it helpful. Please be sure and read the comments - all of them - as you consider this difficult and important conversation. Please pray that men and women like us, who follow Jesus, would live out Christ's love for all people.

The beauty in the poor

The beauty is not in poverty but in the courage that the poor still smile and have hope, in spite of everyting. I do not admire hunger, damp or cold, but the disposition to face them, to smile and live on. I admire their love of life, the capacity to discover richness in the smaller things - like a piece of bread that I gave to a boy which he ate crumb by crumb, thinking it was better so. While the poorest of the poor are free, we are excessively worried about the house, money. The poor represent the greatest human richness this world possesses and yet we despise them, behave as if they were garbage.

Mother Teresa

Losing my religion for equality - Jimmy Carter

I came across this article, Losing my religion for equality, by Jimmy Carter at Jim Herrington's blog. It is worth reading and it addresses the ongoing challenge of the role of women. What are your thoughts?

Where's the joy?

I was at a t-ball game the other night. There’s nothing like it. The stage is set for a great deal of entertainment when a group of 4-6 year olds get together to play an organized game of baseball. I was amazed at how interested they were in the unique material that makes up a baseball diamond. Every inning, most of the kids in the field were entertaining themselves with some form of investigation or projection of this material. A lot of kicking up dust. A lot of scooping and throwing. A lot of wiping it all over their freshly washed uniforms.

Then you watch the adults. Some were very distracted by the dust kicking of their child. Some were fairly unaware and uninterested in the game, except when their Jonny/Jenny was up to bat. Some felt that their child’s chances in the majors were dependent upon their play that evening. Some just were entertained watching 4-6 year olds act like 4-6 year olds.

I was torn. I am competitive and want my son to do well. It is hard for me to be quiet and not want to give some instruction. I also want him to have fun. I don’t want activities like this to become pressure-filled to the point he loses the fun in an activity he enjoys. But at this point, my son is much more interested in hugging the first baseman than he is in getting his buddy out who happens to play for the other team.

One thing I did see tonight was pure joy. The joy of a 5 year old hitting the ball. The joy of a 6 year old finding the ball in her glove when a grounder with some pace is hit her way. The joy of a dugout full of excited kids who just enjoy the excitement of the dugout without any need to win, compete, or be better than anyone else. The joy just of running. One of the common occurrences following a t-ball game is when our team goes out after the game and runs around the bases. There is no purpose other than they like doing it together and they like to run. Joy.

That’s what I’m looking for. Joy.

I thought I’d find it by getting you to think of me in a way I want to be thought of. Nope.

I thought I’d find it by being smarter than most. Nope.

I thought I’d find it by being a better basketball player than you. That’s not doing it either.

All of these fall far short of what I expect them to offer. In fact, all of them leave me feeling greatly disappointed.

I’ve found people who think of me the way I want to be thought of, but I haven’t found joy – just distance and falseness.

What is smarter anyway? It’s not like I take IQ tests or anything like that. I just like knowing more than most in the field I’m in. But yet that still leaves me filled with lots of information but not joy.

And the basketball part just feeds my competitive nature which leads me to be a jerk more often. Not joy there either.

Somehow, kids get the joy thing better than me. I need to learn from them.

"Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." Mark 10:15

Is God disappointed in you?

I read a lot of books.

It makes me feel smart, I guess. I feel like I can talk intelligently in certain circles because I read a lot of books. I also like the feeling of being someone who knows something, even though that something is a lot of regurgitation of what others know.

I think my pursuit has been fruitful yet distracted. I’ve learned a lot about me, about God, about how people put those two together, but I’m coming to a place where I am finding that my quest has been misdirected.

I’ve been looking for answers to questions I’ve had in my brain. But those answers are not what I need to find.

My pride and ego want me to keep searching, keep reading, keep talking with others because it makes me feel good about myself. But I just don’t seem to be getting much traction in finding THE ANSWER.

That’s it. I’ve been looking for the answer, and I guess I don’t even know the question. I just know that I haven’t found what I’m looking for.

I have this blog. It’s a place where I regurgitate the information I’ve collected, lessons I’m learning, thoughts in my brain. Not many people come to read my blog. I wonder why I care so much that no one seems interested in my blog. It contains great information, but yet I care more about people acknowledging me than finding good information.

It sure seems, doesn’t it, that I care a lot about what others think of me. Yep, it’s true. That’s me, already wondering what you think about me.

Do you appreciate my honesty? Enjoy my conversational style of writing? Find me incredibly self-absorbed? Wonder if there is a point to all of these ramblings?

So I carry this psychosis into my relationship with God. I’m not sure what you believe about God or not, but I am one who believes in God. I wonder what he thinks of me.

In fact, I’ve lived a good part of my life trying to prove to God that I am worthy of his attention and even love. Yet, in that pursuit I’ve constantly felt inadequate and, pretty much, a failure.

I haven’t ever been able to make time consistently to spend with God.

I can’t believe the selfishness I see so often in me.

How can I possibly think some of the repulsive things I think?

Why do I do good – so others think more highly of me? That doesn’t count does it?

I read about Mother Teresa (that’s good, right?) and see no comparison between her faith and mine.

I spent some time with some people who believe in God last night. For most of the time, we just admitted to each other how we were failing God. “I could do this better.” “I don’t ever do this.” “I know there is so much more that I should be doing.”

I started thinking, “What kind of a God do I believe in?” Would he be one to point out all of my deficiencies, which I happen to be very adept at doing? Is that what he would spend his time talking about with me?

Yet each of us in that room, seemed convinced we were failing God and his perspective toward each of us would be disappointment. Is that how you feel? Do you think that is how God feels when he looks at you? Disappointed?

The Hole in Our Gospel - part 2

Further excerpts from Richard Stearn's book, The Hole in Our Gospel. Please read this book.

"The true gospel is a call to self-denial. It is not a call to self-fulfillment."
John MacArthur
(25)

When we say that we want to be His disciple, yet attach a list of conditions, Jesus refuses to accept our terms. His terms involve unconditional surrender.
(39)

"If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him."
Sir Francis Bacon
(42)

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Martin Luther King Jr.
(53)

Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
Isaiah 58:3-5

God is never satisfied with rituals and liturgies when the hearts of His people remain corrupt. So He suggested in this passage something that ought to stun our own beliefs about prayer – that because of their hypocrisy, He would not even listen to their prayers! . . . So if God is not pleased with man’s prayers and veneration, what does please Him?

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter –
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Isaiah 58:6-7

If we are to be part of this coming kingdom, God expects our lives – our churches and faith communities too – to be characterized by these authentic signs of our own transformation: compassion, mercy, justice, and love – demonstrated tangibly.
(55-57)

(Read Matthew 25:31-46)

The people gathered before Christ will be divided into two clear groups, the sheep and the goats. But what is perhaps most surprising is that the criterion for dividing the two groups is not that the sheep confessed faith in Christ while the goats did not, but rather that the sheep had acted in tangible and loving ways toward the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, and the vulnerable, while the goats did not. Those whose lives were characterized by acts of love done to “the least of these” were blessed and welcomed by Christ into His Father’s kingdom. Those who had failed to respond, whose faith found no expression in compassion to the needy, were banished into eternal fire.
(58-59)

We learn that Christ’s criterion for determining authenticity of someone’s profession to follow Him is whether or not he or she tangibly cared for those in need. And now we are told that when we do care for them, we are actually caring for Christ Himself – His identity merged with the least and last. There is no “whole gospel” without compassion and justice shown to the poor.
(60)

It takes transformed people to transform the world.
(74)

GRACE and law

I came across these helpful quotes from Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend's book, How People Grow. I am so tempted to live under the law and often I see God as a law-imposer instead of the Grace-giver.

People do not grow until they shift from a natural human view of God to a real, biblical view of God. The first aspect of that shift has to be the shift from a God of law to the God of grace. People must discover that God is for them and not against them. (66)

Paul contrasts the phrase "under the law" with being "under grace" (see Rom. 6:14-15; Gal. 4:4-5; 5:18). Instead of having a God who is for us and giving us what we need, the law is against us and says we have to earn, through our own performance, what we need. What this means is that life is basically a place where we get what we deserve and we have to be afraid of God (Col. 1:21; Rom. 6:23). To get anywhere, we have to make it all happen ourselves. Law means God is ticked off and says, "Do it yourself." Grace means God is for us and says, "I will help you do it." Grace reverses the law.

When we are under the law - in our natural state - we feel that God is the enemy and that we get what we deserve. We naturally try to "earn" life. We try to do whatever we think will get God to like us or whatever we think will solve our day-to-day problems. Thus, we are trying to "save ourselves" (see Matt. 16:25). We try to get God to not be mad, and we try by our own efforts to grow and resolve our issues. Yet Paul says that this way of living is the exact opposite of living according to faith and grace and that if we choose that law, we end up living out the law in real life (Gal. 3:12). (66-68)

Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:16

When we first look at having a view of God that affects growth, we must begin with grace. But it has to be grace that is more than "forgiveness." This "grace" is God's provision of various resources and tools to help us grow. We do not grow because of "will power" or "self-effort," but because of God's provision. God offers the help we need (that's grace), and then we have to respond to that provision. (68-69)

The law cannot change people or make them grow. It is "powerless" to do that, as Paul says (Rom. 8:3). But the law does provide awareness of "spiritual death," which people need in order to find the God who seeks them. The law makes us conscious of our need for God (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 3:24). It shows us that we are hopeless to help ourselves.

By realizing my inability to live up to the laws of life, I had reached the end of myself. I was a candidate for grace, for unmerited favor. I was a candidate for God to be for me and to give me things that I did not have on my own. I realized that I was "poor in spirit" and in need of God. (71)

What really is charity?

The following excerpts come from Amber Van Schooneveld's book, Hope Lives. It is an excellent resource in seeking discernment in how to step into the lives of the "least of these." I highly recommend this resource if you wonder how you can possibly address the suffering that is taking place in our world.

Sometimes I allow myself to be broken. Other times I don’t. And in the times I don’t, I turn to my two good old friends to cope with my confused heart: guilt and charity. I know I ought to be doing something and caring, and I’m filled with guilt. Guilt is a great motivator . . . in the short run. I quickly whip out my checkbook, write a check to the first organization that seems reputable, and wipe my brow. Whew. That’s better. Guilt salved; charity fulfilled.

Maybe I’m guilty for some ills in the world, maybe not. But I don’t think God wants my guilty spirit. I think he wants my repentance, my love. He wants to soothe me with his grace. Grace and love transform, like it did my friend. He started with guilt, but God changed him with love. God transformed him through the Holy Spirit. His heart is broken for this world because of the love of Christ. He loves others because Christ loves him. That is lasting. That is how I want to be.

My charity is less true charity than occasional pity. Giving to “charity,” I think of how I’m being oh-so-good. A gold star on my Christian report card. Extra credit. At the end of each term, when report cards are about to be turned in, I write that check and check of my charity box. I move on, oh-so-benevolent, with a clean conscience.

I think I’ve done something above and beyond my call of duty. I haven’t. I’m commanded to help the poor again and again in Scripture. . . Helping the poor isn’t undeserved charity. It’s justice. Bono put it well: “This is not about charity in the end, is it? It’s about justice . . . I just want to repeat that: This is not about charity, it’s about justice.”

I think I’m learning that God’s justice, what God commands, is that each of his people would have enough bread to live on day by day and be given enough dignity to thrive. It is God’s justice that he has commanded me to give. Not charity. An occasional guilt or benevolence offering isn’t what God wants from me. True charity is love. True charity is mercy. And it’s not extra credit, not an addendum to my faith. As Christians, it’s who we are; it’s our essence.
(34-35)

God, help me.

I came across this prayer today in Hope Lives by Amber Van Schooneveld. It is a prayer I need to keep praying.

God, help me.

I need you. I can’t care anymore. I don’t want to care anymore. I hear these things, these numbers. I see these children’s faces. I see the mothers’ hollow eyes that don’t even ask for help anymore, and I’m broken. My soul is tired of shuddering.

I’m not you, God. You’re infinite – you can keep looking at this world and still love it and still bleed for it. I’m finite . . . but I know you haven’t asked me to be you. You haven’t asked me to heal every wound. That’s not like you. I look at the way you’ve ordered the world, and I know you’ve given me just one little piece, one little corner of the world to care for. I don’t have to do it all.

But I need your help. I need your strength, your eyes. I need your love that keeps on loving. Mine has dried up and run out. I need your Holy Spirit to fill me and dwell in me and be what keeps me standing and going and loving when my heart fails. I can’t soften my own heart. I need you to soften it.

God, I need you.

(p. 34)

The Hole in Our Gospel

Please read The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision. Here are a few excerpts. PLEASE read this book.

The idea behind The Hole in Our Gospel is quite simple. It’s basically the belief that being a Christian, or follower of Jesus Christ, requires much more than just having a personal and transforming relationship with God. It also entails a public and transforming relationship with the world.

If your personal faith in Christ has no positive outward expression, then your faith – and mine – has a hole in it.
(2)

. . . we are carriers of the gospel – the good news that was meant to change the world. Belief is not enough. Worship is not enough. Personal morality is not enough. And the Christian community is not enough. God has always demanded more. . . Living out our faith privately was never meant to be an option.
(3)

"Faith today is treated as something that only should make us different, not that actually does or can make us different. In reality we vainly struggle against the evils of this world, waiting to die and go to heaven. Somehow we’ve gotten the idea that the essence of faith is entirely a mental and inward thing."
Dallas Willard (15)

. . . focusing almost exclusively on the afterlife reduces the importance of what God expects of us in this life. The kingdom of God, which Christ said is “within you” (Luke 17:21 NKJV), was intended to change and challenge everything in our fallen world in the here and now. It was not meant to be a way to leave the world but rather the means to actually redeem it.
(17)

God’s love was intended to be demonstrated, not dictated. Our job is not to manipulate or induce others to agree with us or to leave their religion and embrace Christianity. Our charge is to both proclaim and embody the gospel so that others can see, hear, and feel God’s love in tangible ways. When we are living out our faith with integrity and compassion in the world, God can use us to give others a glimpse of His love and character. It is God – not us – who works in the hearts of men and women to forgive and redeem. Coercion is not necessary or even particularly helpful. God is responsible for the harvest – but we must plant, water, and cultivate the seeds.
(18)

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. They eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:14-21

First, we see the proclamation of the good news of salvation. Take note that the recipients of this good news were to be, first and foremost, the poor, just as Jesus promised in the Beatitudes.

Second, we see reference to “recovery of sight for the blind” (v. 18). . . These references indicate that the good news includes a compassion for the sick and the sorrowful – a concern not just for our spiritual condition but for our physical well-being also. . . Jesus clearly cared about addressing poverty, disease, and human brokenness in tangible ways.

Third, we see a commitment to justice.

God is concerned about the spiritual, physical, and social dimensions of our being. This whole gospel is truly good news for the poor, and it is the foundation for a social revolution that has the power to change the world. And if this was Jesus’ mission, it is also the mission of all who claim to follow Him. It is my mission, it is your mission, and it is the mission of the church.
(22)

"We have shrunk Jesus to the size where He can save our soul but now don’t believe He can change the world."
Anonymous (23)

Joseph & Joseph - Photo update

Click on the month of April in this blog and you'll see the story of the two Josephs. They are at Tumaini (orphanage north of Nairobi, Kenya). They are doing well. It is truly a story of transformation and life change. You can see it in their eyes. Joseph and Joseph are the two on the right. Their friends, Isaac & James, are on the left.

Try to reconcile this

This is an email I received today from Janine Maxwell, who is currently in Africa leading groups. She is the key point person for Heart for Africa, an organization that exists to bring HOPE (Hunger, Orphans, Poverty, Education) to children in sub-Saharan Africa. What is Jesus saying to you through this email? I would love to hear. I'm wrestling with knowing HOW to respond.

Trying to reconcile what I saw vs. what I thought ... (a short version of a long story)

I have been to a juvenile remand home twice before in Kenya. Both of those days were unquestionably the worst two days of my life. Juvenile remand is a holding cell where arrested children (age 5-18) wait to be tried for their crime. They stay there for three to nine months depending on the court system. Yesterday I went to a juvenile prison, which is where the girls are sent after they are convicted of such heinous crimes as stealing bananas, loitering on the streets of Nairobi, or even the prostitution of their pubescent bodies. I expected to be overwhelmed with grief as we arrived at this home for 95 girls, but I knew that we might be able to get the youngest (a nine year old) released through the court system to the custody of the Tumaini home.

Once there we were told that they don’t keep young girls there, only girls age 10-18 (!), but once we were able to sit with the girls and visit them quietly we discovered one who was as young as age seven and several others who looked that young too. Their crime? They are orphans. They have committed no crime other than having parents who died and left them without care. Once they are committed to this institution they stay for three years and go to school there so that they are “reformed” when they leave? After quiet discussion with the girls we learned that they have one class of school per day and then spend many hours doing hard labor digging in the field.

If that weren’t enough, they have no toilet paper, no sanitary pads, no underwear and sleep on foam mattresses that have been soaked with urine from the night terrors the girls have suffered over many years. So I looked for this one young girl who we had heard about and were hoping to intervene for. While I looked I had was given a tour of the facility (highly unusual for this to be allowed) and had a 14 year-old girl with her arm wrapped around my neck on the left, another holding my left hand and a little 11 year-old (so she says, I think she was 8) holding tight to my right hand, never letting it go. This little one is named Lydia.

“Lydia doesn’t speak, she just cries all day long”, I was told by the older girls.

Lydia has been at this place for almost one year. Her father was murdered in a home robbery, her mother died of Tuberculosis (a.k.a. AIDS), her 4 older siblings went to find other family to live with and Lydia and her one year old brother went to live with her aunt and uncle. The uncle didn’t like Lydia so he sent her to the local government school for boys. And guess what? (I ask with a huge heaping of sarcasm). The boys all abused her so she ran away. Police caught her, told the uncle she was going to prison, the uncle didn’t tell the aunt, the girls is locked up now and doesn’t speak, just cried.

Another reason Lydia doesn’t speak is that she was badly beaten by a 14 year-old girl named Purity. Purity is a tiny little thing and would hardly be suspected of being a bully, but she is. She pushed Lydia down off the top bunk bed and smashed her face into the old steel bed frame. Lydia’s front tooth is broken, her gums are bleeding and both sides of her face are swollen. “Why did Purity do that?” I asked the bigger girls and they explained that she has lost her mind. Purity was eleven when she first was sent to prison for loitering, again, an orphan. She ran away and as she left the premises she was captured by a gang/cult of men who were lurking in the bushes (apparently they live just outside the girls prisons to catch any runaways). They men gang raped her and then inserted a full size glass Coke bottle in her and left her for dead. When she was found she was taken to hospital and the bottle was removed surgically. She was returned to finish her sentence and is now an understandably unstable and violent young woman. I asked how the girls knew all this if she was not friend with anyone and they continued with her explanation. One day Purity (can you believe that is her name??) was in class and was being unruly. The teacher reprimanded her and Purity started throwing rocks at the teacher. The teacher started to beat her (as is normal in African schools) and she laughed at the teacher and assured the teacher that there was nothing he could do to her that would harm her more than she has already been harmed. She then blurted out to all the story her attack and sat smugly in the corner while the class remained silent.

Girl after girl came up and pleaded with us to take them away. One promised to give us three years of her life when she was finished school if only we could give her a chance. Another said she had no hope because her mother came to the prison and denied that the girl was her child, right to her face. When the girls finish their three-year sentence the government attempts to find the parents to whom they would release her to custody. Most of the children we met yesterday were double-orphans, meaning that both parents are dead. What does that mean? It means that they have noone to be released to. Some will stay in the prison until they are 18 years old and they will be “free” to go … but where.

So here I sit trying to reconcile what I saw vs. what I thought. I thought we would see THE girl that we were to rescue and bring to Tumaini, but I must say I am frozen by the memory of the girls and their stories from our brief 90 minute visit. Does the Lord have one girl who is to be saved? Is it Lydia? Will someone provide sponsorship fees so that we can get permission to bring her to Tumaini. My head is numb and I ask for your continued prayers for wisdom, discernment and peace. This is not right and Jesus wants us to fight for His children.